I've been having a lot of problems with Firefox at YouTube lately. I haven't noticed it at other flash sites, but that might be because I visit YouTube more than most other flash sites. Anyway, this is the procedure that usually happens:

I go to a YouTube video (this always happens on the urls for videos, not the main page or any other page), and as soon as I navigate away from the video, the browser freezes up. The video stops playing, and the window freezes.

This is a strange thing: I then hit the X button (in the darkened Firefox window), which brings up a question box asking if I want to kill the process. I hit yes, and try to reopen firefox. It says that firefox is already running but not responding, so I need to close the other firefox processes. I bring up a command line and type in "ps -e | grep firefox" and it brings up two processes: "firefox" and "firefox-bin." I give the command to kill them both (which I type in as "kill ####," which I say in case I'm typing that in wrong). So I try to open up firefox again and it gives me the same error message saying that firefox is running and I need to close it. I type in "ps -e | grep firefox" again and fine that "firefox" is no longer running, but "firefox-bin" still is. I type in the command "kill ####" again, but no matter how many times I give that command the process is still there.

The only way to fix it is a restart of the entire computer (I also tried logging out then back in, to no avail).

Another bizarre symptom is that unexpected things occur, usually the system tray's icons being reorganized without warning. The logout button, the volume icon, and the time/date are all moved to the left of everything else (whereas I usually keep them on the right, where they are by default unless I'm mistaken). I don't know if that means anything at all, but if it's helpful I thought I'd mention it.

At first I thought I could just grin and bear it or something, but it's happening constantly and getting very frustrating because I visit YouTube quite a bit. What's the differential on a screwy firefox? (I'm watching House, it had to be said ) Is there any way to fix this? Alternatively, might whatever's causing it be fixed in Hardy?

My specs are in my sig, thanks to anyone who can help.

What version of Firefox?

The "About" says 2.0.0.13. I also do the auto-updates.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: There are times that Firefox just closes, usually whenever I do something, not just when viewing a page. Like, I'll click a link and every open Firefox window will close. Not freeze, just close. I click on Firefox and hit restore and it all comes back. This does not have to involve YouTube to happen. I can't seem to see any pattern to this at all. It's also really annoying.

I've tried turning my desktop effects off to see if that might somehow be related. I'd like to keep those if I can, though. But it might not be related at all, I won't know certainly for a day or so, or until the next crash.

This is not an Ubuntu-specific problem. I have the same exact issue with Firefox 2.0.0.13 and Flash 9.0r124 on Slackware 12. Although, mine doesn't bring down the entire computer. If I type 'killall firefox-bin' and re-run Firefox, it's back to normal, and it never affects any other part of my system.

Same here... It happens to me on Ubuntu 7.10 and Debian Etch.

IGF

Google gave me this site http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_crashes
It might help.Check "standard diagnostic" and "hangs"links.

I'll try "killall" next time. I've never heard of that command before, thanks (I'm still learning how to use the command line).

I'll try that link sometime (at the moment it's 11:30 at night and I'm trying (so far unsuccessfully) to get to sleep).

It seems that turning off 3d windows in Compiz helps for me. That is, instead of crashing completely, it just closes the window, which is an improvement. I'm not certain yet, though, that's just been the experience so far. I haven't the slightest idea why it would make Firefox crash, but I do know that 3d windows isn't a finished product and is known to have some bugs (unless I'm mistaken).

Thanks, everyone!

I've the exact same problem (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/2008041816 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.14).

I tried with flashplugin-nonfree, swfdec-mozilla, libflash and always the same thing. I also tried the latest firefox 3 beta and the freezing still happens.

Any ideas?

Ok I found my problem. I installed an old version of Adobe Flash manually quite some times ago and totally forgot about it. It was installed in ~/mozilla/plugins and has 1st priority over all the other ones I tried to install after. That's why libflash, gnash, and the newest version of flashplugin-nonfree didn't work at all.

I deleted these 2 files: flashplayer.xpt and libflashplayer.so and restart Firefox. Now the newest version of Flash load properly and no more freezing!

You can also check if you have more than one version of the flash plugin installed with aboutlugins in firefox.

Hope this help.

ok guys and gals, I don't consider myself a newbie, but i'm sure not up to expert yet. I've converted over about 15 people to Ubuntu from the M$ monster. Any how some of them were complaining about this hanging issue. I think I have found the answer by accidnet. So my wife was yelling at me cause she can't you tube it up. I start googling of course.. Lots of olds post about this.. anyhow I check the flash version on adobe site. I'm cureent but I figure i'll dl the .rpm and alien it over to deb. When I attempt to dl I find that my disk is pretty much full. I free 3 gig's and bam no hanging. Now this lappy was setup using guided full disk thus / and swap are the only 2 mount points (i didn't see the point in splitting an 80gig). Any who.. check you / mount points for space maybe it'll be the answer.